Slowing down the residency to have kids

[scared sh*tless]

Hi all, I am an extreme newbie with a question for all those who have completed, are completing or are contemplating a FP residency:

I have heard rumors that FP is especially accomodating to redsients who want to have children during residency. I have heard of people taking a year off, or of the program stretching out the schedule (say from 3 years to 5) to accomodate these young mothers wanting to be with their children in the formative years. Are these rumors fact or fiction, in your experience?
I know that in surgery, the polar opposite is true: take an extra week off for you child and you have burdened your colleagues with a lot of extra work.

Also, if you can, please let me know the program to which your experience relates.

The reason I ask is that myself and my wife, who is currently an MS III, want to try to have kids sometime before five years from now, and we'd like to avoid having to spend their first two years with a nanny while we're on q4 call. I'm going to do neurology, but she is considereing Emergency medicine, Family Practice, and Pathology.

Thanks for your time everyone!

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[eeft]

Hi,

I am a MSIII also, and have been looking into this same question. There
are some schools that allow "shared" residencies - i.e. 2 people take 1
spot and each do 1/2 time (every other month, for instance) for 6 years
instead of 3. What geographical area will you and your wife be applying
in?

 

[scared sh*tless]

Hi,

I am a MSIII also, and have been looking into this same question. There
are some schools that allow "shared" residencies - i.e. 2 people take 1
spot and each do 1/2 time (every other month, for instance) for 6 years
instead of 3. What geographical area will you and your wife be applying
in?

Hi EEFT.. we are looking at Southern California, Miami, Chicago and The raleigh-durham area (a lot of area, I know)

Do you know which schools allow shared residencies?

 

[eeft]

Hi EEFT.. we are looking at Southern California, Miami, Chicago and The raleigh-durham area (a lot of area, I know)

Do you know which schools allow shared residencies?

There is a list of programs that allow shared residencies on FRIEDA, also
www.aafp.org has good descriptions of all family practice residencies,
including if they allow shared residencies, if they have onsite child-care,
if they have established maternity leave policies, etc.

As far as I can tell though, probably the first step is to find a compatible
candidate who you can apply with. I imagine that even some of the
programs that don't advertise that they take shared residencies could
be persuaded if you had 2 strong applicants who worked well together
and had a cohesive plan for how to share the residency - particularly if
you are applying to a program that has trouble filling its spots (a list of
match results are also on FRIEDA, I think).

I am limited to applying only in the Philadelphia area, b/c of my husband.

If there is anyone out there who either has been through a shared
residency or is interested (either in Philly or in the areas listed in the
previous post) - we'd love to hear your thoughts!